6 Reasons Advanced Pump Interfaces Improve Process Productivity 

Eric Rentsch, Product Marketing Manager, Masterflex

A touch screen is ideal in the laboratory or a process environment

You focus on process improvements and adding efficiency to workflows. One way to accomplish both is leveraging modern pump technology. As an example, by using a pump equipped with a user-friendly, intuitive touch-screen interface, you can easily realize six benefits that can save you time and money.

1. Greater functionality

Have you ever typed your name on a directional pad? It’s rather aggravating. Compared with a directional pad for navigating through a user interface menu structure, a touch-screen interface dramatically improves navigation and accessibility of the various settings and modes the pump can deliver. This allows you to easily implement the pump to meet a greater degree of fluid handling needs around your site.

2. Ease of Use

A touch-screen interface is a more natural interface to use with smart phones and tablets. The user-friendly nature of touch screens coupled with the more recent advances in this technology allow for efficiency improvements through clearer and simpler organization of information, which can be an advantage to the visually impaired as well. The addition of thematic colors helps guide you to the appropriate pump functionality, saving process time and improving productivity. There are no functional limits of use even when using gloves and other protective gear due to the capacitive nature of the touch screen. It offers improved usable lifetime over older-style interfaces that require physically depressing buttons to navigate the menu structure.

3. Faster Onboarding

By featuring an interface like a smart phone or tablet onboarding is better streamlined, familiar, and more intuitive. Using an easily navigation menu structure, you can get up to speed with your daily tasks more quickly, improving productivity.

4. Keeps your Tech-Edge Sharp

An advanced touch-screen interface is often coupled with the ability to be easily updated as well, offering users enhanced functionality with their existing pumps over time. As new features are added to a given pump, these features can often be quickly—and even automatically—integrated into the easily accessed menu structure of a touch-screen-equipped device.

5. Worker Satisfaction

The touch screen can simplify daily pump operation and decrease your onboarding time. It limits the use of screen time through intuitive menus. It allows you to save programs for future recall. It is user-friendly with on-screen visual guides and prompts, and it provides better engagement. The primary appeal of touch-screen technology is the natural and direct interaction it facilitates. It is far simpler to operate and far more intuitive to use.

6. Greater Lifetime

New touch screens provide more reliability—this translates to longer life and ease of use. They are manufactured of robust materials that have been proven in industrial environments. The elimination of mechanical keys removes failure points commonly found with keypads.